Realistic loot

What I hate in most games is that you get attacked by a monster and after you defeat it you find lots of loot on it that this creature obviously never had. For example: You kill a wolf and find gold. Or you defeat a skeleton armed with sword and as loot you find an axe and a leather armor (which the skeleton didn't wear) but no sword at all.
What I would hope for is that monsters drop the things they really use. If an orc with a warhammer and a chainmail and helmet attacks me I want to find this warhammer, chainmail and helmet as loot.

 

Or (this is my favorite) struggling and eventually overcoming a wizard who is obviously powerful, obviously well magically protected and ending up with no spellbook, no wand and no magical protection either in ring or robe form. [obviously this is only appropriate in systems where the only way to cast spells is through a spellbook or wand...]

Basically, if they can use it against you and you overcome them.. you should be able to take it off their corpse

 

Amending my previous post... I guess there is an argument to be made that this is difficult in a game environment due to itemization and inflation... the boss keeps respawning you will end up with a glut of wands/books/etc...

But like the OP says, at least keep it consistent

 

Most games actually try to balance realism with practicality. You can either get gold / grafting mats, or you can get a bunch of gray items that are vender fodder, or you can get some kind of white item that can be salvaged into crafting mats. People want some kind of loot from mobs, giving you the gold straight up just saves you a bunch of steps.

GW2 is an example of a game with lots of gray items and salvageable stuff vs usable loot.

 

People want loot from mobs, but on the other hand, giving players too much loot creates other problems in the game, people get more wealthy than they should be. Better to force them to go through some steps, and carry back a lot of heavy material to town that they have to fit in their inventory, if they want to take the time to do that.

You also could have a problem with a glut of items like Elvish Dragon says, but if enemies with many good items are appropriately rarer and harder to defeat, and remain harder because you can't get too overpowered, then maybe that won't be so much of a problem.

 

The loot could be damaged/unusable, perhaps valuable only for raw materials.

I too would like to know where that tiny snake kept that piece of armor.

In the early days of EQ, you could give items to mobs, and it was kind of fun to mess with people (putting bear skins/teeth on a wolf). One time someone (not me) gave a skeleton a rather powerful weapon, so that it could easily kill lower level chars, and in doing so created a great event with a nice reward.

 

Reducing the loot from monsters drastically to the things you see on them (like what armor or weapon they wear) + what they might carry in pouches would change the whole dynamic and purpose of combat. You would not attack monsters to look what cool loot they have but instead you would have to fight for your life. Battling an ogre should not be because you want to have his loot but because you want to survive the encounter. At least for the single-player this could be an interesting take on combat.

 

I think the original Fallouts worked like this. You kill an army of bandits and each one of them had a gun, ammo, and whatever body armor they were wearing. Eventually you just stop picking all that crap up because it was too heavy to bother lugging to a vendor every 5 minutes.

I see there are realism pros to this, but it depends on how modern and sophisticated SotA is with auto-loot systems etc. to make it worth it. Auto-looting has its advantages and filling monsters full of heavy junk you do not want to carry would render it unusable.

 

Yes, reminds me on those quests like "Bring 10 buffalo horns" for the pure grinding.
You start killing buffalos and maybe one out of 5 provides one of these horns, even if realistically every should have not only one, but two.
I really hope not to see this kind of time burners in our game.

 

They can make loot make sense in other ways. Kill a pack of wolves and find a den with items from corpses of victims they have killed.

Same thing with Dragons and their loot piles. How do you think monsters get their loot? There are a lot of unsuspecting victims.

 

My "favorite" absurd loot is a swarm of (regular-sized) insects dropping a full set of plate mail; the loot is way larger, and weights way more, than the "mob"

@Antalicus: That kind of loot only works for when the creature is attacked in his lair, when it somehow carries the "treasure" inside itself (gelatinous cube, giant critters that devour opponents with all their belongings, etc), or when it is intelligent enough to use tools and carry them around.

It doesn't help with many, perhaps most, types of random encounters, and can sharply unbalance things if players can actually avoid the mobs and collect the treasure without fighting. WoW was more or less forced to remove chests from dungeons due to that; rogues and druids could use stealth to loot all chests without ever entering combat, and a large number of them started to farm treasure chests, creating a nasty imbalance in how much gold different classes could farm.

 

That would be a great Idea, behind the pack of wolves is some type of resource (ore, wood, sand, etc) that someone (miner, lumberjack, ect) needs to gather. That way the group would not only need combat players but also some players who could gather the best resources.

Or again like using the Cartography skill to find a buried treasure behind the wolves.

 

It would also help offset the possible increase in normal items that you would see in other foes. So while wolves would no longer drop gold, bandits would drop swords all the time and whatnot.

 

It could be if you see a mob wearing a certain item then it has a better chance of dropping. I like to window shop a little. If I'm looking for a helm I could kill every mob wearing a helm until I get one, knowing my chances are better would be nice.

If monsters are able to loot players corpses like in UO then they should always drop those items. They should also visibly equip those items.

 

Hopefully they avoid the issue UO has where 99% of the loot is useless.

 

I don't want this to be a Diablo-like loot game. Killing someone shouldn't drop a bunch of items on the ground. Bring back the U4/U5 system where you got gold out of an encounter and maybe just maybe if you're lucky an item.

I know people will say, "why does a wolf drop gold," but basically it's the game's way of saying "whatever you got off of this creature (hides/equipment/whatever) is worth X gold but without you having to pick it up, schlep it somewhere, and sell it.

 

I strongly suspect that crafting will require monsters to drop more than "gold and occasionally an item", be it for food, alchemy, regents and the like.

Fine and dandy to stylize loot by providing the player with the end result of salvage (Gold) but we also need a increase table to account for the crafting. As stated above, GW2 while having an awful amount of junk items dropping from mobs they at least also drop monster related crafting items.

I am, however, for related loot. Gold should only drop from those mobs who should be carrying it and have the player either collect and sell the rest of the "loot"(be it armour, weapons, nick-knacks) for the "gold" equivalents or use the dropped components from those non humanoid monsters for crafting. Mind you common objects should be a dime a dozen.

 

I've always justified the 'you found gold on a wolf' to it eating a former adventurer... and it accidently swallowed it, lol.

 

I asked about this in the Dev chat this morning. Firelotus didn't ask them my full question about items on NPCs, but here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Vbf5DDz2w#t=47m33s

 

i think the best balance we can look for here is consistency. obviously if i fight a bandit i shouldnt expect a full inventory of what the banddit is wearing, etc (ultima was like this, ultima online wasnt for economy reasons), but whatever items i DO find on the corpse should at least be consistent with what i was fighting (if i was fighting an archer i shouldnt find a sword)